Palimpsest

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

In the Cities of Coin and Spice and In the Night Garden introduced readers to the unique and intoxicating imagination of Catherynne M. Valente. Now she weaves a lyrically erotic spell of a place where the grotesque and the beautiful reside and the passport to our most secret fantasies begins with a strangers kiss.…

Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift, and a curse&#8212;a voyage permitted only to those whove always believed theres another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are marked forever by a map of that wondrous city tattooed on their flesh after a single orgasmic night. To this kingdom of ghost trains, lion-priests, living kanji, and cream-filled canals come four travelers: Oleg, a New York locksmith; the beekeeper November; Ludovico, a binder of rare books; and a young Japanese woman named Sei. Theyve each lost something important&#8212;a wife, a lover, a sister, a direction in life&#8212;and what they will find in Palimpsest is more than they could ever imagine.

Review:

"Four strangers are bound together in adventure, love and occasional sorrow in this parable from Tiptree winner Valente (The Orphan's Tales). The city of Palimpsest exists somewhere outside our reality, accessible only during the sleep that follows sex. The 'immigrants' to Palimpsest, marked forever by the tattoo-like impression of a map on their skin, seek out one another for real-world sexual adventures that function as passports to new otherworldly quarters. In outstandingly beautiful prose, Valente describes grotesque, glamorous creatures sometimes neither human nor animal, alive nor dead, and mortal travelers who pursue poignant personal quests to replace the things (and people) they've lost. Valente's fondness for digression at times makes for a difficult read, and her fable of quest and loneliness is less an engrossing fairy tale and more a meticulous travelogue of a stranger's dream." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Synopsis:

From the author of "The Orphan's Tales" comes an erotic and exotic tale of four lost souls mapping a fantastical city.

About the Author

What Our Readers Are Saying

Average customer rating based on 2 comments:

popelizbet, April 23, 2009 (view all comments by popelizbet)
Palimpsest is the best novel you may have only heard about through word of mouth and whispers on the Internet. This is possibly fitting considering its themes of secrecy and intimacy that pervade its lush storytelling, but this book deserves every bit of attention it gets, and more.

Delight? Check. Instruct? I think so. The story itself is like the jeweled cockroaches of the city of Palimpsest, the city of dreams to which immigrants who encounter the city are inexorably drawn back...a city that is both reverie and nightmare, often at once, its passports spread every time its nightly visitors from the waking world take another lover. You follow four immigrants, a Quarto, into Palimpsest - and live there yourself, for as long as the book holds out. Every bit of even that small fragment of the story, however, is better read than related. Like all of award-winning author Valente's books, the richness and complexity of Palimpsest is difficult to convey in a review that strives not to reveal secrets.

Better to just read it. You won't be sorry.

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"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"Four strangers are bound together in adventure, love and occasional sorrow in this parable from Tiptree winner Valente (The Orphan's Tales). The city of Palimpsest exists somewhere outside our reality, accessible only during the sleep that follows sex. The 'immigrants' to Palimpsest, marked forever by the tattoo-like impression of a map on their skin, seek out one another for real-world sexual adventures that function as passports to new otherworldly quarters. In outstandingly beautiful prose, Valente describes grotesque, glamorous creatures sometimes neither human nor animal, alive nor dead, and mortal travelers who pursue poignant personal quests to replace the things (and people) they've lost. Valente's fondness for digression at times makes for a difficult read, and her fable of quest and loneliness is less an engrossing fairy tale and more a meticulous travelogue of a stranger's dream." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
From the author of "The Orphan's Tales" comes an erotic and exotic tale of four lost souls mapping a fantastical city.

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